Saratoga family finds healing, forgiveness, after near-fatal stabbings by schizophrenic son

MARCY -- "It's kind of funny to say this ... but I feel free," Matthew August said, sitting in a room in Mid-State Correctional Facility in Marcy, surrounded by heavy steel doors and razor wire. "I feel free inside."

The 23-year-old has been diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia.

Three years ago in January, he stabbed his brother, Brandon, while Brandon was sleeping and stabbed his mother when she tried to stop him. The wounds were serious, and there were questions as to whether they would survive.

Today, though, their family is closer than ever, and their love for one another has grown.

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"I'm glad of where I'm at now. I'm glad of where my family is at now," August said, three years into a six-year prison sentence. "It's blessed."

A hundred miles away in his Saratoga Springs apartment, his 24-year-old brother still bears the scars of the brutal stabbing. But the scars don't tell the story, he said. He is stronger and feels better than he did then and said his family's love has grown "10-fold."

"The bond that has brought us together as a family is awesome," he said.

They see each other nearly every weekend when Brandon, along with their mother and father, all make the trip to Marcy.

The dark path

Before the incident, Matthew's condition was undiagnosed. Now medicated and regularly seeing a psychiatrist and nurse practitioner, Matthew said he doesn't like to dwell on the stabbing.

"I don't like thinking of where I was," he said.

He mentioned hearing voices and thinking people were poisoning his food.

"I thought everything was supposed to be like that," he said, struggling for words to explain. "What would come across my mind, I would just accept."

Brandon said he saw his brother on a "dark path" in the months leading up to the stabbing.

Looking back, he can see there were signs; but at the time, he said, there was "nothing I would point to and say 'mental illness.'"

At 19, Matthew frequently went to parties at night, drinking and smoking marijuana. In the late months of 2009, he had become reserved.

The night of the assault, their mother asked Matthew if he needed to go see a doctor, but he shrugged it off.

"He wasn't himself at all," Brandon said, adding that he was nearly shaking and pacing.

At about 4 a.m. Jan. 8, 2010, Matthew had a psychotic episode and stabbed his brother repeatedly, puncturing nearly every organ in Brandon's body, except his heart.

Forgiveness

Despite the extent and severity of his injuries, Brandon was on his feet within three days of the stabbing. He said doctors called his recovery "remarkable."

Within five weeks, he visited his brother in a mental hospital in Marcy.

"That was probably the most difficult thing in my life," Brandon recalled. He didn't know what to say, how to act or what to expect. He said the two eyed each other while family around them talked.

Then, the brothers embraced.

"He and I gave each other a big hug and just cried," Brandon said.

As time went on, Matthew asked his mother and brother for their forgiveness.

Matthew accepts his time in prison and his responsibility for what he did, but in many ways, the man who stabbed his brother and mother is not the same man who is serving time in prison.

"It wasn't him. It wasn't his mind. It wasn't his being," Brandon said. "It was his illness.

"He still tells me every time we talk that he asks God for forgiveness. He sees it as a tribulation he has to face in his life."

"I think the Lord allows us to be stripped of everything. He allows us to be broken down so much that we can be built up and have a stronger relationship," Matthew said. "It's like starting new; starting fresh."

Both men say they were frustrated with the justice system in the wake of the stabbing and the choice Matthew faced.

Mental health and criminal justice

Matthew was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia a few months after the stabbing. And while it was clear the attack was a direct result of his illness, it was not an answer to the charges against him.

He faced two counts of first-degree assault, felonies that could have sent him to prison for 50 years.

A year after August had pleaded guilty and was sent to prison, his defense attorney, Terence Kindlon, explained that they discussed a defense of "mental disease or defect" -- the legal term commonly referred to as "temporary insanity" -- but even if it succeeded, Matthew contends he would not have been better off.

For violent offenders with mental illnesses, their commitment to a psychiatric facility may be a life sentence because a group of doctors has to approve a patient's release.

The doctors at psychiatric facilities "want to be very careful that when they are released, they don't go out and injure someone else," Saratoga County District Attorney James A. Murphy III said in 2011.

Murphy, whose office prosecuted the case, said the choice Matthew August faced was either a specific term in prison or a potential lifetime in a psychiatric facility.

Matthew August said he and his attorney decided that a prison sentence -- one in which he still receives some mental health treatment -- was the preferable option.

Matthew spent time in a mental health facility while awaiting trial. "You could tell there were some people who were going to be there for a while," he said. "Here, I have a light at the end of the tunnel."

At his sentencing, both Brandon and his mother pleaded for a lenient sentence for Matthew.

"I just want him home," said his sobbing mother, Susan Chaplain, outside Saratoga County Court after Judge Jerry Scarano handed down the seven-year sentence, the minimum amount of time allowed for the crime.

Nearly two years later, Matthew said he believes it was the right choice, but said, "There should have been more options in the system, instead of just sending a mental health patient into prison."

What lies ahead

Inside, Matthew has made the most of his time.

He has immersed himself in scriptures and is active in a Bible study group. Though the brothers had gone to church since the first grade, Brandon said Matthew "wasn't walking as a Christian should" before he went to prison.

"I think the Lord issued me this time so I can change, so I can grow, so I can be a different person and to allow my family to have a little space so they can grow. Then, we can be united," he said. "I have accepted the time, and whether I feel it's right or not, this is what was given me."

Matthew has plans for the future.

Those plans include continuing his treatment.

"I don't want to go back to what I was," he said. "I have no plans of going off my treatment."

He wants to apply the faith he found in prison to help raise awareness of mental illness and change the attitude toward it.

"My hope is to let people know there is help out there for mental health patients if you stay on medication," he said. "In my case, I found the Lord. No matter how dark the situation gets or how bad, there is a light at the end of the tunnel."

Matthew says anyone who thinks they or a family member is struggling with mental illness should tell someone.

"Don't be afraid to speak up when there is something going on mentally, or when you feel a change," he said. "If I can go from what happened with me to a completely new person with medication and changing my ways, I know there is a way for people to find help out there, too.